https://www.planetary.org/articles/2...e-way-to-orbit
The RS-25 is certainly reliable. It powered space shuttles 135 times during three decades of service. The engine flew successfully all but once. In 1985, a sensor malfunction caused an RS-25 on Challenger to shut down early. Challenger still made it to space and completed its mission. Counting that one failure, the RS-25 has a reliability rating of 99.7 percent.
What about performance? NASA has called the RS-25 "the Ferrari of rocket engines." Is that true?
Steve Wofford manages the liquid engines program for SLS at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. "The RS-25 is the best rocket engine in the world—by a mile," he said, during a recent phone interview. "In terms of efficiency, performance and demonstrated reliability, RS-25 is an absolute marvel of engineering that no liquid propulsion system in its thrust class can match. Nobody's even close."
The RS-25 was one of the world's first staged combustion engines, which placed it years ahead of its time. In the simplest of terms, a staged combustion engine utilizes all of its turbine exhaust by capturing it and feeding it back into the engine. It's a closed-cycle design. The alternative is an open-cycle, gas generator or tap-off design that ends up dumping some of that exhaust overboard.




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